Both seen on the “Most Popular” page on Yahoo today. Two different stories, but the juxtaposition was too much to pass up:
Getting something for nothing
Eric offers the advice
Don’t expect something for nothing.
What are surfers willing to do to get personalized content?
In May, ChoiceStream did an email survey of 923 U.S. online adults, and found that consumers want personalized content, but they are wary of using methods like click tracking to inform the personalization. Not only that, but they are less willing to provide information or allow tracking than they were a year ago:
Not too encouraging. And if 68% of visitors are opposed to using click and purchase tracking in order to provide what many people actually want — personalization — is it any wonder that they don’t see the value in cookies?
On conversion rates
According to the Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Online Retail report (that’s a mouthful), here are the top 10 online retailers by June conversion rates:
| 1-800-Flowers | 19.4% |
| Lands’ End | 18.4% |
| Victoria’s Secret | 14.5% |
| L.L. Bean | 14.1% |
| QVC | 13.7% |
| eBay | 13.6% |
| Amazon | 12.2% |
| Proflowers | 11.9% |
| Barnes & Noble | 11.1% |
| Crate and Barrel | 11.0% |
These seem low to me. After all, people are going to these sites to buy things, right? They might be doing some comparison shopping, but I doubt that’s the bulk of the visitors. So over 80% of the visitors, who don’t have many reasons for visiting the site in the first place, are leaving without buying anything.
Maybe they’re looking for this week’s specials? Browsing the latest offerings? Reading the site’s privacy policy? The analysis here would be useful.
I’m with the brand
Advertising Week is, well, just what it sounds like. A week of the ad industry celebrating itself. Among the highlights, the “Procession of the Great Icons”, where you can get a glimpse of Mr. Clean, Smokey Bear, Cap’n Crunch, McGruff the Crime Dog and dozens of other advertising icons strutting through Times Square and up Madison Avenue.
Also (drumroll please) the award ceremony for the winners of this year’s brand icons. Last year, the winners were M&M’s brand characters, the AFLAC Duck, Mr. Peanut, the Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger. Who might it be this year? Coffee addicts are hoping for an upset by Juan Valdez, maybe riding on Charlie the Tuna. Or will the Doublemint Twins ride off with Snap, Crackle & Pop?
Notably absent, I would think, would be the makeover edition icons. Yes, Twinkie is absent, but LL Koolaid may grab the young urban vote, especially doing his “fat guy in a little coat” routine.
Oh and lest you think that only icons were winners, Advertising Week will also announce this year’s slogan hall of fame winners.
What’s your favorite advertising icon? Slogan? Cast your vote! and check out the previous year’s winners.
Common themes for Mac applications
The Mac community is aghast at some of the cosmetic changes in iTunes 5. Apple in general seems to be encouraging its own developers to do whatever feels good. The resulting interfaces are sometimes pretty slick, and sometimes gruesome.
I’m in the “brushed metal sucks” camp. So at home, I use Sagefire’s Iridium theme. Here’s a screen grab of iTunes 5, Mail and Finder, after the theme is applied:
It’s not for everybody, doesn’t even out all the usability quirks, doesn’t mask absolutely everything (see the white in menu bar volume control, for example), and it only runs on OS X 10.4. But when the alternative is brushed metal finder, I can deal with these minor inconveniences.
Hacking Web Measurements
Yesterday a couple of packages arrived in the mail from O’Reilly. Each one had a copy of Web Site Measurement Hacks. When author Eric Peterson asked me if I’d be willing to write up a hack on using network sniffing, I said sure! At least I can contribute something I know a little bit about. Eric promised it would be a hands-on guide, not some philosophical treatise.
The book fulfills its promise, worthy of the O’Reilly Hacks series name. It’s information-dense, with lots of practical advice, and good tricks of the trade. All told, there are 100 hacks here, with contributions from an all-star cast of vendors and practitioners.
Eric did a great thing in naming this book. First, he positioned it correctly — this is about measurement & reporting, not analysis. Second, he set the stage for a couple more books. My crystal ball might say that the next logical book would be on metrics and KPIs, and then on to real analytics as marketers might use them — funnel analysis, SEO/SEM, customer acquisition, churn, retention, engagement — perhaps with side stops for things like A/B testing, segmentation, targeting, etc.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. If you love web data, you’ll like this book. Our little bundle of joy is growing up!
Disclaimer: I wasn’t paid to contribute and don’t get any royalties.
What’s Next in Vertical Analytics: Blogs
If you’ve seen my About page, you know I don’t pay attention to my blog stats. I mean, I do care about visitors and referrers. I get referrer info from places like PubSub, so they show up in my RSS reader. I don’t really care about visitors as much as I care about participants. If you comment, via my blog, your blog, or email, or hit me up in person, that’s enough for me.
However — that’s not true for many bloggers. They invest a lot of themselves, and want to see a return on their investment, even it’s just the satisfaction that they are reaching an audience.
At the Search Engine Strategies conference a couple of weeks ago, I got a sneak peak at an early-stage project for tracking and reporting on blogs. Between then and now, a number of blog-tracking related projects have emerged, in one form or another. For example, there’s
- Mint from designer/developer Shaun Inman
- MeasureMap from the AJAX (“say ay-yax”) term-coiners at Adaptive Path
- BlogBeat from persons who apparently wish to remain nameless.
There are more, but you get the picture. In fact, Brad Feld lists all the blog metrics tools he’s been using, and fantasizes about a dashboard that could pull them all together.
They each have their own spin on tackling the problem. Nothing’s been announced about any of them, although that doesn’t stop the hyperbole.
A couple days ago, the person who showed me the demo at SES said they’ve expanded their vision and are continuing with development. Seems like we’re in for a new round of vertical analytics.
Interview with the Cookie Monster
DMNews has an interview today with Jupiter analyst Eric Peterson. Worth a read.
What I Did on my Blog Vacation
Well, I see that after a long slumber, A List Apart is back, with a new look and a new outlook. So I’m back too.
I updated to the latest version of WordPress, and changed the look of the blog. That default was ready for a change. There are dozens of things about the new look that I want to change, and there are some outright problems with it — but I only have so many hours in the day. If you’re reading via RSS, the only thing to note is that you’re missing a sidebar of photos from Flickr.
Speaking of which … I upgraded to Flickr Pro. Click Click!
I hung out with some web analytics folks who were attending SES in San Jose; even got my picture taken with Ram Srinivasan of FireClick:
I watched as Yahoo! Search announced they had tons more stuff in their index, while others tried to prove they didn’t (with some amazingly bad methodology, if I may say) and only ended up proving that Yahoo prunes spam pages better than G. One of the Yahoo engineers responsible for extending and validating the new index was amused.
I prepared (and delivered) too many presentations. I got the book Beyond Bullet Points, and read the associated blog but I can’t say I really applied the concepts .. always preparing presentations on deadline – no time to do the up-front design required. But I like the book anyway.
I stopped reading blogs for a few weeks, and realized that I wasn’t missing much. I fired up my RSS newsreader (NetNewsWire) and retired about half of the blogs I was reading. I’m under 190 feeds now, many which I ignore except for maybe a monthly check-in.
I tried to get into Getting Things Done. I guess I subscribe to the Christopher Walken theory of GTD. Don’t futz around with labelers, hipster PDAs and Moleskine notebooks – just get it done. Of course, maybe I just need the right pen, or software, or …
I re-decorated my office and learned Morse code. OK, kidding.
I saw Black Eyed Peas and the Dave Matthews Band. Before I saw them, I really wasn’t a fan of either. Seeing them live didn’t change anything. Maybe Dave knows Morse code.
I bought a Spyder 2 colorimeter and tried to profile my monitors. The PowerBook display is still too blue, which is OK as long as it’s not next to any other monitors.
Maybe more. The usual raft of work-related fires. If you wrote to me and I didn’t write back, my apologies. I’m still catching up.
Y! and WAA
This is old news, but hasn’t been announced anywhere, so …
Yahoo! has joined the Web Analytics Association as a Founding Corporate Member.
If you look at the bottom of the WAA home page you’ll see logos from the other founding corporate members. Except for Yahoo, they are all vendors of web analytics software. So why is Yahoo! there?
You may have noticed that Yahoo! has made a major commitment to the Web. But it’s also made a major commitment to the data that powers engaged users and interactive marketing. Appointing a Chief Data Officer is one sign of that. Another is being involved in Web-related standards bodies, whether it be helping standardize display ad dimensions, how to accurately collect information, construction of privacy policies, reduction of email spam, etc. The WAA certainly embodies the ideals of community, standards and best practices, so it makes sense for Yahoo to be involved and to support the WAA at this significant level.